The ayes have it.

I'm sure I saw eyes akin to these on the infamous Graeme Burton on his initial court appearance, that look of uncontolled 'P' driven fervour and excess adrenalin ...

Schools Secretary Ed Balls is calling for a "culture change" to tackle the problem of the 200,000 teenagers who are so-called "Neets" - not in education, employment or training.Teenagers who drop out of education will face tougher benefit rules designed to reduce the number of young people who are unemployed and not training for work.

Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday revealed the finding in the previously unreleased 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey ... She said about 380,000 Kiwis were identified in the international survey as being at level one, a level at which they would be unable to determine how to use a fire extinguisher from the instructions written on the bottle.
"And of the over three quarters of a million people estimated to be at level two it is said that people at that level can deal with material that is simple, clearly laid out, and where tasks involved are not too complex."

Soooo ...

The Labour-led Government is considering raising the school leaving age to 17 as part of a suite of measures to boost students' achievement and get them ready for the workforce.

Like the failure caused by context reading was responded to by subjecting them (the failures)to more of what was not working (thankfully it is now slowly changing) the answer is to 'keep them at school longer.'

Sooo ... again the 'why?' is not explored and the reasons specifially addressed. I am sure our embattled teachers will be pleased ... and if this 'more protracted education/training' is 'personalised' or constructed or reframed such that it necessitates 'success' then again we are in to the game of 'tailoring to failure' rather than teaching for a criterion level of functioning.

Why will our policy makers never look at where the bullet will end up when they miss their target?